Weighted grades for different sections

[IcedCoffeePlz]

Hi all! 
I’m an Instructional Technologist and I have a faculty member teaching a 400/600 course and wants to have his weighted grades set up differently for the undergrads. I can assign things based on these sections, but want to make sure students don’t get impacted by the weighted grade set up. I have an idea if anyone can confirm if it would work? 
If I have all of the homework, for instance, assigned to everyone and worth 20%, then have a quiz assigned to Grad students worth 30% and another quiz assigned to UG students worth 20%, would Canvas be calculating the final grades so UG would only be seeing 40% of their grade associated with this example (or would Canvas be factoring in that other 30% of the G assignment group?)? 

I hope this makes sense. Any help or questions for clarify is appreciated! 
Thanks!! 

[blopes · Accepted solution]

Hi @IcedCoffeePlz 

Students' totals are only based on graded assignments. If they don't have a graded assignment under a group, then that group's percentage won't count for them. Only the groups that they have grades in will calculate. However, they will see on their grades page the totals for each assignment group. 

I would advise you to test this first and see if would work as you need it to. Since it is not the intended use for the groups Canvas can't guarantee the expected behavior. 

How do I weight the final course grade based on assignment groups? 

[IcedCoffeePlz]

Thank you! This is what I was trying to wrap my head around and was struggling to find in any of the documents. 

[AUMahindraRock]

@IcedCoffeePlz I have the same question.  Did you test this theory?  What were your results? Did it work?!

[IcedCoffeePlz]

Hi! I'm sorry for replying so late - it's been a busy week!

So I have tested the theory using student test accounts in my sandbox and it appears to work as noted above. My faculty hasn't had the chance to test it in a live course, but I think it's an effective way to assign different things to specific students with different weights.

A few things to note that came up during my testing process:

- You'll have to remember to assign the assignments within the assignment groups directly to specific students *and* ensure they're not being assigned anything they're not supposed to submit. Let's say it's Assignment 1 (for UG students) and Assignment 2 (G students). You can Excuse graduate students from Assignment 1 (adding EX in the space in the gradebook), but it will show up for that student as an assignment with "excused" next to it. It doesn't impact the grade or anything, but I would reach out to clarify why they're seeing that if you go this route. If you don't want graduate students to see Assignment 1 in their gradebook, you'd have to go in and add each undergraduate student to Assignment 1 leaving graduate students out (so instead of it being assigned to "everybody" and excused, it's only assigned to specific students). With a large class this could be an exhausting process (and risk of missing students) if adding students one at a time (copy/paste doesn't work from my experience).

- Students regardless of what they've been assigned will see the total of weighted grades as higher than 100% because the total amount of assignments weighted for the course is over 100%. Students are only graded (with weighted grading applied) based on what they submit - so in their grade breakdown it just shows N/A if they've submitted nothing (like if they were not assigned something within an assignment group.

I would suggest that if you go this route to be transparent with your students about the weighted scale for each group (or however this is done on your end) and reassure them that they will only be graded on a 100% weighted scale and to ignore the whatever% that's listed in the gradebook.

I hope this makes sense - this is the first time I'm writing it out so I apologize if it's "twisty turny". I think I've teased out the best way with potential challenges, but if anything doesn't make sense, let me know and I can either re-write it or test it to see what could happen.

Thanks for asking!

Jess

[aime_fournier]

This seems OK but when I add a group worth 35% then in Gradebook Total those students scores sort to the top because their max Total is 135 compared to the other students' max Total being 100. Is there a way to get the denominators 135, 100 into the Total?

[IcedCoffeePlz]

Hi! Sorry for the delayed reply, I wanted to check in with my faculty and make sure the grading scheme was working as planned.

The key thing here is to ensure that the sections max at 100% -- but it will display the overall course percentage at 135% or whatever (which I admit is irritating - hopefully Canvas can allow for an undergrad/grad difference/indicator someday...). Make sure you're assigning the assignment/exam to the section within the assignment/exam itself (you can't do this from the Assignment Group).  This is what I did:

• I weighed each assignment group per the syllabus (some assignments were assigned to all students)
• A separate assignment group was made for each exam as the UG/G sections were weighted differently -- then I duplicated the exam and assigned one to the UG students, one to Grad students
• The graduate-only assignment was assigned to the graduate students only and weighted in the assignment group
• Made sure each section's weighted grades added up to 100% and included a note about the percentage issue in the syllabus

The assignment group's weights only impact the section it's assigned to.

I hope this helps. It seems to have worked (and will edit this post if my faculty discovers there was an error/issue with the math).